1. Field
The present disclosure pertains to the field of information processing, and more particularly, to the field of multi-processor information processing systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Processors in a multi-processor information processing system may be arranged into groups. For example, a multi-processor system may include two or more clusters of processors, where each cluster includes multiple processors connected to each other on a processor bus. Other groupings of processors in a system are also possible. For example, a physical processor that supports simultaneous multi-threading (“SMT”) may include a group of two or more logical processors, a multi-core processor may include a group of two or more processor cores, and a multi-chip package may include a group of two or more processor chips.
A system may include more than one type of grouping, so the processors may be arranged into different levels of groups. For example, two cores in one multi-core processor may each support SMT; therefore, there may be two groups of logical processors, with two logical processors per group, at one level, and one group of processor cores, with two processor cores per group, at another level. The arrangement of processors into different groups at different levels may be referred to as a multi-level processor topology.
Furthermore, each processor in a multi-processor system may support a processor identification instruction that may be used to uniquely identify the processors in the system.